The primary goal of the proposed research is to learn whether dye-polyelectrolyte complexes can be used as a means of studying the conformation of biopolymers. A second goal is to clarify the nature of the dye-polyelectrolyte complex itself since it may be a useful analog for certain biological complexes e.g. messenger-RNA bound to ribosomal RNA. A third goal, closely related to the first, is to study the use of optically active poly-electrolytes as a means of directing asymmetric syntheses. The proposed research contains very specific means of attaining the first and third goals and it is believed that the second, less well defined objective, will be achieved as a byproduct.